By Emily Neie

English writer Jim Crace, currently a visiting professor at The University of Texas at Austin Michener Center for Writers, gives a reading tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302. Crace’s archive resides at the Ransom Center, and on a previous visit to Austin he spoke with Ransom Center staff about his interests and work.

In these two videos, Crace reflects on writing advice he took to heart early in his career and how one of his favorite authors, T. H. White, adopted a life of learning to deal with depression. These videos exemplify Crace’s understanding of the emotional value of the physical and how he uses this connection in his writing.

Jim Crace’s Writing Advice

“I found myself writing more directly and more convincingly about my mum through scissors than I would’ve done if I’d written about her emotionally…”

Jim Crace on T. H. White’s Materials at the Ransom Center

“…Once you’ve learned to parse medieval German verbs, you can learn to plow. And once you’ve mastered plowing, you can set your attentions towards knitting. And once you’ve learned to knit, you can discover how to make dough rise. And that was basically his [T. H. White’s] method of dealing with this deep depression he had all of his life…”

By Emily Neie

English writer Jim Crace, currently a visiting professor at The University of Texas at Austin Michener Center for Writers, will give a reading this Thursday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302. Crace’s archive resides at the Ransom Center, and on a previous visit to Austin he spoke with the Ransom Center about his interests and work.

In these two videos, Crace discusses how painting coastal watercolors sparks his imagination, and shares several original drawings of imaginary places. These videos illuminate the inspiration Crace draws from places he created as a child, both real and fictional.

Jim Crace on Painting

“All of my novels, without exception, I think, are landscape novels… and I think that landscape is almost a character in all of my novels. So these things are important to me.”

Jim Crace’s Childhood Maps and the Narrative of Travel

“I used to love looking at atlases. It seemed to me that implicit in every map I looked at on every page was a narrative of travel, an armchair story that you could imagine yourself going around this coastline or traveling up that river or crossing those mountains.”

By Jessica McDonald

Jessica S. McDonald, the Ransom Center’s Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography, speaks with photographer, curator, and educator Nathan Lyons about his career and role in the expansion of American photography on this Thursday, November 8, at 7 p.m.

McDonald edited the anthology Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Interviews (UT Press, 2012), which provides the first comprehensive overview of Lyons’s career as one of the most important voices in American photography. Below, McDonald shares insight about Lyons.

A relative newcomer to the arts and humanities, photography’s history is still largely uncharted, contested, and complex. The full impact of major figures on the development of this young field, especially during the American “photo boom” of the 1960s and 1970s, has not yet been accounted for. The historical complexity of this era became especially fascinating to me during my tenure in the Department of Photographs at George Eastman House, the museum of photography and film in Rochester, New York, that was a key center of creative and intellectual activity when few other museums collected photographs.

In Rochester I met Nathan Lyons, a figure who has had an inestimable impact on the history of photography in the United States and its expansion over the last five decades. As a curator at Eastman House in the 1960s, Lyons organized some of the most groundbreaking and ambitious exhibitions of the time, and he later founded the Visual Studies Workshop, an independent arts organization and graduate program that trainedthe next generation of photographers, critics, curators, and historians. Lyons played a role in founding many of photography’s important organizations, including the Society for Photographic Education, and consistently advocated for photographers to funding agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts. All the while he was an active photographer, exhibiting his work at nearly every major U. S. museum and publishing several volumes of his own photographs, including Notations in Passing (1974) and Riding 1st Class on the Titanic! (1999).

In 2008 I began formally researching his role in American photography, and with his cooperation—including generous access to his files and countless interviews—I put together a volume of his photographs and writings. Lyons will join me in conversation at the Harry Ransom Center this Thursday to celebrate the publication of Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Interviews, published this year by UT Press. The presentation will combine photographs representing Lyons’s artistic development with a discussion of his pivotal essays and lectures. We will also consider contributions from important scholars in the field who have written on Lyons’s work as an artist, his influence as a curator, and his widespread impact as an educator. A book signing follows.

Come relax in the Design Within Reach outdoor lounge, sip on refreshments from Austin Wine Merchant and Dripping Springs Texas Vodka, and escape the heat with architecturally-inspired ice cream sandwiches from Coolhaus. Bring your vision of the future to life with Toy Joy’s interactive “City of the Future” and pose in a photo booth with one of Bel Geddes’s famous streamlined cars.
You’ll also get a first look at the exhibition, have the opportunity to enter a drawing for a Bel Geddes-inspired prize package, and learn more about the life and career of this influential industrial designer who, more than any designer of his era, created and promoted a dynamic vision of the future.

The Ransom Center is giving away a pair of tickets to “FutureLand.” Email futurelandgiveaway@gmail.com with “Norman Bel Geddes” in the subject line by midnight CST tonight to be entered in a drawing for two “tickets to the future.”

By Jennifer Tisdale

In April, Helen Moore, Fellow and Tutor in English at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, spoke about the history of the King James translation at the Harry Ransom Center. The talk is now online on YouTube.

Moore was lead curator of Manifold Greatness: Oxford and the Making of the King James Bible, an exhibition held at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in 2011. Her illustrated talk addressed the role played by Oxford in the translation of the King James Bible, the methods used by the translators, and some of the items displayed at the Oxford exhibition.

The event was co-sponsored by Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford and The Wall Street Journal.

By Kelsey McKinney

Helen Moore, a fellow and Tutor in English at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, speaks Thursday night at the Ransom Center about the history of the King James Bible translation. The program will be webcast live at 7 p.m. CST.

Moore’s interdisciplinary research has been founded on bringing neglected texts back to academic attention. She was lead curator of Manifold Greatness: Oxford and the Making of the King James Bible, the exhibition held at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in 2011 in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the translation of the King James Bible. Moore and Julian Reid co-edited Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Bible, the book that accompanied its associated exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library and now at the Ransom Center.

In this video, Moore and other scholars discuss the challenging task that the translators of the King James Version faced.

This event is co-sponsored by Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford and The Wall Street Journal.

“Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Bible,” co-edited by Helen Moore and Julian Reid.

By Io Montecillo

Each year, thousands of undergraduates come to the Harry Ransom Center to visit with a class, attend one the Center’s programs, or view an exhibition.

Since its founding, the Ransom Center has been an important resource for undergraduates at The University of Texas at Austin. Harry Ransom believed that meaningful undergraduate education was not complete without exposure to rare books and manuscripts.

The Ransom Center continues to maintain this vision to encourage undergraduate interaction with its collections and is launching a new resource that provides information about the many opportunities available to undergraduates.

Whether an entering freshman or a graduating senior, students can explore and be inspired by the offerings of the Ransom Center. Through exposure to and interaction with collection materials—whether it be a manuscript, photograph, artwork, or rare book—students can open the door to the creative process.

By Megan Barnard

On Thursday, April 5, the Ransom Center kicks off The David Foster Wallace Symposium with a public event featuring Wallace’s literary agent, Bonnie Nadell, and his editor, Michael Pietsch, in conversation with Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin. The free, public event will take place at 7 p.m. (C.S.T.) at Jessen Auditorium, across the plaza from the Ransom Center on The University of Texas at Austin campus. Please note that seating will be limited. Registrants of the symposium will have reserved seating, and Ransom Center members will receive priority entry at 6:20 p.m. Doors will open to the general public at 6:30 p.m. Those unable to attend the event or the symposium can enjoy a live webcast.

Throughout the day on Friday, April 6, the symposium will continue with a series of panel discussions featuring esteemed writers, editors, critics, and journalists who will consider Wallace’s work, his life, and his contribution to contemporary literature. Registration is limited, and only a few spaces remain.

The Ransom Center acquired the David Foster Wallace papers and Wallace’s personal library in late 2009. Since that time, the Center has acquired several smaller collections related to Wallace, including:

Photocopies of Wallace’s completed “usage ballots” for the American Heritage Dictionary. Wallace was a member of the company’s board that governs decisions on usage, spelling, and pronunciation.

Items related to “Democracy and Commerce at the U. S. Open,” an article Wallace wrote for Tennis magazine in 1995, including correspondence with Jay Jennings, senior editor at Tennis.

A photocopy of a typed letter from Wallace to Brandon Hobson in which Wallace gives writing advice to the then-22-year-old Hobson.

Nine annotated drafts of “Host,” an essay Wallace published in The Atlantic Monthly in 2005, together with correspondence related to the essay between Wallace and Martha Spaulding of TheAtlantic.

A small collection of correspondence, primarily from Wallace to recipients including collector Bernard Peyton Watson, who donated the materials.

An unpublished typescript essay titled Pearls & Swine by Wallace, written at the request of James Harmon, who wrote to well-known individuals requesting that they respond to the question, “If you could offer the young people of today one piece of advice, what would it be?”

A collection of correspondence and manuscripts Wallace sent to editor and literary critic Steven Moore between 1987 and 2004, together with photocopies of correspondence from Wallace to writer David Markson.

A two-case display of select items from these various collections will be on view in the Ransom Center’s lobby April 3–8.

Because of anticipated high demand for the use of the Wallace papers and associated collections during the symposium, all researchers intending to request access to these materials must inform curatorial staff of their research plans in advance of their visit, no later than March 30, 2012. To protect the materials, space and access will be limited. Walk-ins will not have access to the materials during this time.

We look forward to welcoming symposium participants, registrants, and other guests to the Ransom Center during the symposium to celebrate the life and work of one of the most creative and influential writers of our time.

By Kelsey McKinney

Each Friday, the Ransom Center shares photos from throughout the week that highlight a range of activities and collection holdings. We hope you enjoy these photos that reveal some of the everyday happenings at the Center.

Undergraduate intern Michelle Bennight updates the inventory of paintings in the Ransom Center’s art collection, which included documenting works and confirming measurements and other information. Photo by Jennifer Tisdale.While visiting the Ransom Center on Tuesday, author T. C. Boyle signed the Center’s authors’ door. Photo by Pete Smith.Visiting speaker, Shakespeare scholar, and Columbia University Professor James Shapiro views materials from the Ransom Center’s performing arts collection with Associate Curator for Performing Arts Helen Baer. Photo by Alicia Dietrich.

By Kelsey McKinney

Portrait of William Shakespeare.

James Shapiro, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, speaks Thursday night at the Ransom Center about Shakespeare’s “life” as currently written. The program will be webcast live at 7 p.m. CST.

Shapiro specializes in Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture and is the author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare and 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. Cultural Compass spoke with Shapiro about his research, the sparse data on Shakespeare’s early life, and his favorite play.

In your book 1599, you focus on a year in Shakespeare’s life in which he wrote five plays. How did Shakespeare, an actor himself, find the time to write such masterful works?

Shakespeare somehow managed to finish Henry V, write As You Like It and Julius Caesar in quick succession, and draft Hamlet in the course of that year. He seemed to have written plays in inspired bursts. The pressure of drawing audiences to his company’s new theater, The Globe, must have had something to do with it as well in 1599. But we do well to remember that playwrights turned out plays then fairly quickly. Thomas Dekker either wrote or collaborated on ten plays that same year. How Elizabethan playwrights did it without caffeine—neither coffee nor tea were available yet in England—makes that achievement even more remarkable.

With relatively little information to work with from the beginning and end of Shakespeare’s life, how do you piece together his life?

It takes time—and patience. I started working on 1599 in 1988 and didn’t publish it until 2005. I started another year book—on 1606, the year of King Lear and Macbeth, five years ago—and don’t expect to finish it until 2016. Slowly but surely, over time, and with enough dogged research, the pieces of the puzzle start fitting together. It can get frustrating—and happily it’s not the only project I work on at one time, or I’d go mad.

In several interviews you have hinted that biographers of Shakespeare are drifting toward fiction in their work. What amount of theory do you think is appropriate in a biography? Where is the line?

Well, that’s the subject of my talk on “Unravelling Shakespeare’s Life.” So come to the talk [or watch the live webcast] where I’ll address this—and will answer any questions you might have after. It’s less about theory than fantasy and invention, what biographers have to supply when the facts of the life, especially the inner life, haven’t survived.

You said that you hated Shakespeare in grade school. What changed your mind?

What changed my mind was seeing terrific productions. I spent a lot of time backpacking overseas in my teens and twenties and ended up spending a good deal of that time in England, where it was possible to see extraordinary actors taking on Shakespeare. I was hooked. Over the course of a decade I may have seen 80 or 100 productions of Shakespeare’s plays—and much of what I know of Shakespeare derives from those formative experiences. I never did take a college class on Shakespeare, though that’s what I teach these days. I also spend a lot of time now working with theater companies and helping to train teachers to teach through performance.

Do you have a favorite play?

Usually the one I’ve seen most recently, onstage or at the movies. The recent and brilliant film by Ralph Fiennes of Coriolanus has made me want to spend more time with that often overlooked tragedy.